July 16 - Little Apple Jazz Festival and National Issues

Community Bridge's program on the 2009 Legislative session had to be rescheduled for a later date. We open this week's show with Cortney Smith, Summer UPC co-Chair, who discusses the Little Apple Jazz Festival.

Next we take on some of the myths that surround President Obama and which conspiracy theorist and right-wing pundits continue to repeat as if they were truth. Last weekend, Kris Kobach,- Republican candidate for the Kansas secretary of state position, showed his true colors and poor taste when he said in prepared comments at the Leavenworth County Republican Party barbecue that Obama is like God in that he doesn’t have a birth certificate. One of several lies the right-wing continues to repeat about the president. We hear why it is hard to correct misconceptions about President Obama in a clip from On The Media. Brooke Gladstone interviews Brennan Nighand in this clip from the July 3 edition of OTM.

We follow with a clip from CounterSpin featuring Janine Jackson interviewing Sasha Abramsky, author of Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It.

The NAACP turns 100 this month and the civil rights organization celebrated this week in New York. We the rebroadcast a panel discussion on the NAACP centennial hosted by Laura Flanders of Grit TV. Flanders interviews: Hilary Shelton, Director of the Washington, D.C. bureau of the NAACP, Sonia Ossorio, President of the National Organization for Women in NY, Derrick Johnson, President of the Mississippi NAACP, and James Rucker, Executive Director of Color of Change.

This is followed by by a clip from April featuring Tavis Smiley interviewing Robert Greenwald about his film, In Their Booths, a documentary series about the impact the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are having on people here at home. Every episode features a documentary about how America’s servicemen and women, their families, and our communities have been profoundly changed by our nation's campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shot on location throughout the country, these stories stress the courage of our participants, and the valor of the people and organizations that help our heroes on their journey.

We close with the rebroadcast of another GRIT TV feature, The Cost of Health Care, that originally aired on July 9th. Laura Flanders interviews: Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Reed Abelson who covers healthcare for the NYT, and Teresa Ghilarducci, director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy at the New School on the real cost of healthcare reform.

MP3 File